A HEROIN addict died of a drug overdose the day his pregnant partner discovered she was going to give him a son.

An inquest heard that Geoffrey Wilson and his partner Samantha Herd, who both had drug problems, had dreamed of a fresh start when she discovered she was pregnant.

But while Miss Herd immediately came off heroin her boyfriend continued to use it.

She said: "I never got chance to tell Geoffrey 'we are having a baby boy.'"

Miss Herd, who is due to give birth in February, was not well enough to attend the inquest but in a statement she told how the couple had met in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation unit.

They moved into a flat in Accrington. Miss Herd said: "We were very happy, despite our drink problems," said Miss Herd. She told how they eventually started smoking heroin together, but not injecting, and he was eventually sent to prison after committing a crime.

"I missed Geoffrey terribly," said Miss Herd, who moved to Largs Road, Blackburn. "I visited him in Lancaster prison as often as I could afford."

She said that at the end of March she was involved in a traffic accident which left her with a broken leg.

"I still visited Geoffrey in my wheelchair and he seemed to be doing really well," she said. "He was doing a 12 point rehabilitation programme in prison and was eventually released with a tag to live at an address in Lancaster. He was clean of drugs and when I found out I was pregnant it was the fresh start we both wanted."

Miss Herd was prescribed slow release heroin tablets to help her get "clean". But she said Mr Wilson got back into using heroin. The couple moved to Devon Street, Darwen, at the beginning of September but his heroin use seemed to get worse.

"I constantly feared he would overdose," she said.

"The week before his death he was spending all our money on heroin.

"I was clean apart from the tablets I was prescribed and I told Geoffrey if he was going to inject he must do it at home so I could keep am eye on him."

On the day of his death Miss Herd had been picked up by her mum and taken to hospital for a scan which revealed that her baby was a boy.

Miss Herd went to her mum's for tea and they went back to Devon Street two hours later.

She found Mr Wilson slumped on the toilet and despite efforts to revive him he never regained consciousness.

Miss Herd added: "I am totally devastated."

He leaves behind his unborn baby and his three children from a previous marriage.

The medical cause of death was given as poisoning by morphine potentiated by denzodiazepam.

Recording a verdict of misadventure, coroner Michael Singleton compared using heroin to playing Russian roulette.